


Open Your Window

by hutchabelle



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-01
Updated: 2015-01-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 18:57:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3083363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hutchabelle/pseuds/hutchabelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Katniss Everdeen finds out why her best friend and neighbor Peeta Mellark always sleeps with his window open.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Open Your Window

**Author's Note:**

  * For [barenakedpeeta](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=barenakedpeeta).



Apparently it started when we were very young, although I didn’t know until several years later. You see, I didn’t really know Peeta, didn’t understand how important he’d become to me until much, much later, but his habit began soon after he saw me for the first time.

 

I was aware of him. We were in the same class at school, but I only discovered he was my neighbor after the fact. I don’t remember meeting him the first day of Kindergarten. I may have, but I was so caught up in going to school for the very first time I wasn’t paying much attention to anyone outside my immediate surroundings.

 

Of course I noticed him eventually. Peeta was so kind and well-liked by everyone that I couldn’t escape his presence, but I knew I’d never be able to be close with someone so friendly and popular and genuinely good. I knew even at that young age that I’m not the kind of person people want to be around because I don’t shine warmth and light. I’m the kind of person people respect from a distance and rarely approach.

 

And that’s what Peeta did with me, too. Throughout elementary school, I caught him appraising me a number of times. I couldn’t ever be really sure if that’s what he was doing or not, but I’d glance up and his eyes would flit away before our gazes locked. This happened repeatedly—repeatedly enough that it would have driven me crazy if Peeta were anything but someone I admired from afar.

 

His family moved into a house on the street next to mine a few months after we started school together. The back of his home faced the rear side of mine, and I could always tell when Peeta was home because his bedroom window opened, and the curtains fluttered in the breeze. Oftentimes we were only separated by the fence between our back yards, although I wasn’t ever really sure when he was outside. Still, we didn’t talk. Before he moved in next door, I’d made the corner of the fence my happy place, the spot to where I escaped when things got overwhelming.

 

That happened a lot. My mom lost her job during an economic downturn, and my father didn’t come home one day. We waited for hours before we received the news he’d been killed in a pile up on the interstate, a victim of foggy weather and impatient drivers who felt the need to weave in and out of traffic to save an extra two minutes in travel time to their destination. Thankfully, we already owned our home, but money became incredibly tight after that and sadness ran rampant. My sister Prim and I always made sure to launder and fold our clothing carefully. We couldn’t afford to replace them if they were ruined. I remember a number of times I went to bed with a rumbling stomach and the promise of only a very scant breakfast the next morning.

 

When things became too much, I fled to the corner of the fence and sang to myself. Mostly the notes were soft and melancholy, reflections of the pain and anger I felt at our situation. It was a rare day that the sun shone just right, and I lifted my voice in a joyful tune.

 

Outside of my backyard I was painfully shy around anyone I didn’t know or trust well, and Peeta seemed to lose his voice anytime I came within hearing distance. It was hard to shake the feeling that somehow I wasn’t someone he liked very well since he didn’t seem to have any trouble approaching anyone else, but I didn’t have the confidence to ask him about it.

 

_When I look back now, I wonder how I survived without his comforting presence in my life for so long. Since we’ve found each other in a very different way, everything is better. I’m a little less closed-off, a little less reticent, and a little less surly. That’s the kind of power Peeta’s personality possesses._

 

We finally found our way to each other during the last two years of high school. My best friend Gale had graduated and left town to attend West Point, and without him there, Peeta finally worked up the nerve to approach me. I still remember it like it was yesterday.

 

“Hi, um, Katniss?” a voice had stammered from behind me.

 

I looked up from my sparse lunch and straight into his deep blue eyes. Those eyes—windows into his soul—shone down at me, and I squirmed under the intensity. The first two weeks of the school year had been pretty miserable without Gale. I didn’t have anyone to eat with now, and I’d been hiding at a table in the very back of the lunch room. I didn’t want anyone else to see what little food I had.

 

“Yeah?” I responded more rudely than I meant to.

 

“Uh, sorry. I just saw you sitting alone and wondered if I could join you.”

 

“Do whatever you want.”

 

Somehow that didn’t scare him off, and he settled across from me before unwrapping his lunch.

 

“I know we don’t know each other well,” he started, his eyes carefully focused on the sandwich in his hands, “but my name’s Peeta, and I’d really like to stop being just classmates and start being friends.”

 

I observed him silently for several moments, long enough that he finally raised his eyes to mine. The anxiousness I saw there convinced me he wasn’t trying to set me up. He seemed to genuinely want to talk.

 

“Katniss,” I said curtly. I tried to soften it with a half-smile, but I’m sure it came out more like a grimace than anything else.

 

That didn’t seem to bother Peeta, though, and a close friendship developed over the course of our 25 minute lunches. It didn’t hurt that he was always willing to share the food he brought. My favorite was the bread with cheese baked into the crust that he seemed to pack at least twice a week.

 

By the time we graduated and he left for college, Peeta meant more to me than I could admit even to myself. I stayed behind and attended the local community college and worked nights and weekends while Peeta attended the state university a couple of hours away. We emailed, sent texts, and communicated through various forms of social media, but I missed our shared lunches as well as the generosity and acceptance he always showed me. When he came home for winter break, I was ready to admit how I felt about him. Unfortunately, he’d found someone else and brought her home to meet his family…and me.

 

It felt like betrayal, which I know wasn’t really fair. Peeta didn’t know how I felt about him. I certainly hadn’t given him any indication that I wanted anything more than the friendship we’d nurtured for two years. It still hurt. That’s how I found myself back in the yard, in the corner of fence, when I heard them.

 

The Mellarks had gone out. I’d seen their car leave earlier with Peeta’s parents inside on an airport run to pick up his two older brothers. It was clear Peeta and his girlfriend were enjoying having the house to themselves.

 

At first I didn’t understand the noises that wafted from his open bedroom window. That habit of his hadn’t changed at all over the years, and I could hear everything as a result. A steady thumping alerted me first, but then I heard voices as well.

 

A scream of “Oh yes! Harder, Peeta!” reached my ears, and I suddenly realized the banging sound was Peeta’s headboard hitting the wall as my best friend fucked another girl. I sat frozen in shock, unable to move, sickened beyond words that the man I loved was naked and inside another woman. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to scream and run and hide and hit him, but I couldn’t do any of it. Instead, I tried to shut it out. I tried to block out the sounds by covering my ears, but I could still hear the bed hitting the wall—even over the thud of the blood rushing in my ears.

 

It wasn’t long before Peeta’s moans reached my ears, too. His deep voice carried when he groaned in time with the shaking of the bed. “Glimmer,” he grunted repeatedly until it was clear his control was about to snap. He yelled his surrender as she wailed approval, and I bit my finger to keep from screaming.

 

The illicit sounds quieted, and I gulped to control my tears. As horrified as I was by what I’d inadvertently witnessed, my blood boiled in my veins. I stood and steadied my shaky legs before sprinting to the house and locking myself in my bedroom. I couldn’t even wait long enough to remove my jeans. I thrust my fingers inside my panties and lost myself in the slickness there. As my tension built, I heard Peeta’s moans echoing in my head until we exploded together.

 

When I was finished, I lay there for several minutes filled with a mixture of emotions—relief, gratification, disgust, sadness, and a longing so intense I wanted to scream. How could I face him after this? How could I look in Peeta’s face knowing that I loved him when I just listened to him at his most vulnerable, at his most exposed?

 

Even worse, how could I wake up again tomorrow and the next day and the next knowing that he wanted someone else, that I was only his friend and not the woman he wanted to love? I cried myself to sleep that night after refusing to go downstairs and eat dinner. I didn’t emerge from my bedroom and ignored each of the texts Peeta sent asking me to join him and Glimmer for dinner and a movie.

 

The next morning I woke to several more texts and three missed calls from him, but I still couldn’t face him. It wasn’t until he forced me to talk to him by showing up on my stoop that I finally responded to him. Peeta stood at the door with a mixed expression of hurt and confused anger. His chest heaved with pent-up frustration as he glared at me.

 

“What’s going on, Katniss? I’m only home for a little while, and I really wanted to spend some time with you. Why are you ignoring me?”

 

My pride took over, and I reverted to the distance and haughtiness I’d perfected in high school. “I’m not ignoring you, Peeta. I just have other things to do. You’ve been gone, so you don’t realize that I’m hardly ever home anymore. I’ve seen you since you’ve been back. We don’t have to spend every second together.”

 

The hurt in his eyes, those beautiful blue pools, deepened and his shoulders slumped. “I knew I shouldn’t have brought Glimmer home with me. I knew we wouldn’t have much time to spend together if I did, but she needed a place to spend a few days before her family was available. I’m sorry, Katniss.”

 

“It’s fine,” I replied a little too flippantly, but Peeta was too distraught to notice. “We’ll see each other on your next break. It’s not like you’re that far away anyway. Maybe I can make it down there this semester. If that would be okay with your girlfriend, that is.”

 

He looked at me quizzically and nodded his head slowly. “Why wouldn’t it be okay with her? Katniss, is everything okay…with us, I mean?”

 

“Of course! Of course, of course, of course. Go home, Peeta! Go spend time with your brothers and your parents and your girlfriend before she has to leave,” I insisted with a wave of my arms. “We’ll see each other when we’re not so busy.”

 

He hesitated, clearly unsure, but I gave him a finger wave and shut the door before he could make a move to hug me. I didn’t want to touch him with the memory of his voice shouting his climax echoing in my head.

 

I managed to avoid him for most of the rest of his break, which allowed me to regain some of my composure before we really had a chance to talk again. I apologized to him without admitting what was really bothering me and bit my tongue every time his relationship came up in conversation. A distance could have grown between us, but Peeta worked hard to make sure I understood how important our friendship was to him. It took me a little longer to let go of my disappointment and hurt, but over the course of the next few months we managed to slip back into the easy rapport we’d built during our last two years in high school.

 

By April, I’d gotten to the point at which I realized Peeta seemed happy enough with Glimmer, and I gave in when one of my co-workers asked me out on a date. I’m still not sure what made me say yes; probably sheer desperation to feel better about Peeta being with someone else, but it was a horrible idea. Thom took me to a movie, insisted we sit in the back row, and proceeded to grope me the entire movie. I got up to use the restroom twice, but he didn’t take the hint. The only reason I didn’t punch him was because I didn’t want the scene it would have caused in the theater.

 

Never more grateful that I’d insisted on meeting Thom at the theater rather than allowing him to pick me up at home, I slumped in my car in relief until I felt the buzz of my phone in my pocket. My face broke out in a relieved smile when I saw Peeta’s name and swiped the screen to read his message.

 

**Are you free? Need to talk. Skype?**

Puzzled, I fired back a text telling him I’d be home soon. Why did he need to talk on a Saturday night? Wasn’t he out with his girlfriend as he had been every single other weekend evening since he’d returned to school unless he made a quick trip home for the weekend?

 

Peeta looked horrible when I finally got the computer going. His eyes were rimmed in red, and they were shuttered. Because he was usually as open as his window, I knew something was very, very wrong.

 

“What happened, Peeta? Are you okay?” I asked frantically and placed my fingers on the screen in an attempt to touch him.

 

“Glimmer and I broke up,” he blubbered in a broken voice.

 

My heart jumped in my chest at the news, so unexpected and so wonderful, but I had to temper my joy since he was in such pain. “Oh, Peeta. I’m so, so sorry.”

 

He lifted his tear-stained face to the screen and sniffled, “Thanks.”

 

When he didn’t offer any more, I asked tentatively, “Are you okay?”

 

“Do I look okay?” he sputtered and flailed his arms in the air. He definitely did not because the Peeta I knew would never act so frazzled. I wanted to be careful with him, but my heart leapt in my chest continuously with the hope that maybe this would eventually lead to him viewing me as more than a friend.

 

“I just can’t believe it. I thought we were happy. I thought we were doing okay.” He sprang from his chair and strode from one side of the room to the other as he vented. It was almost comical to catch sight of him as he paced past the camera and back again. I wasn’t sure if he’d forgotten that I couldn’t see him unless he was in the direct path of the camera or if he didn’t care. I tried not to tune him out, but I didn’t really want to hear him laud his ex-girlfriend. I’d rather hear him talk about all the things that were wrong with her, but he wasn’t to that point yet.

 

My eyes were focused on his dorm room window that was open over his bed, just as it was in his bedroom at home. The sheets were rumpled, the bed unmade, and I smiled at the thought of Peeta curled up in the blankets with his eyes closed and his face relaxed in sleep. A rush of tenderness passed through me, until I grasped what he’d just said.

 

“Wait, what?” I shouted at my computer in an attempt to gain his attention. “What did you say?”

 

He stopped in front of the table and plopped back down in his chair. His body blocked my view of both the bed and window, and that was probably for the best since he answered, “I said, ‘Why did she wait until after we had sex to pick a fight with me?’”

 

The blood drained from my face, and I gagged behind my hand at the thought of him hard and buried inside someone else. “What do you mean?” I asked, although I sure I didn’t want to hear his explanation.

 

He looked at me with a perplexed expression and spoke very slowly. “Um… What’s not to get? She came over. We had sex,” he said with a motion towards the bed, “and then she started yelling at me. When I tried to reason with her, she told me it was over and walked out. I tried to go after her, but she made it pretty clear she didn’t have any interest in trying to work through anything with me.”

 

“You just… I mean, you were… Just now? On _that_ bed?” I raised a trembling finger to point behind him. I felt sick to my stomach. I’d just imagined him sleeping there and how good it would feel to climb in next to him, and he’d been fucking another woman between those sheets.

 

“Well, we weren’t doing it on my roommate’s bed, Katniss,” he answered in exasperation. “What’s wrong?”

 

I couldn’t form words. Somehow it didn’t matter that he was single again. He was heartbroken about losing Glimmer, and I was the best friend he called so he could cry on my virtual shoulder. He didn’t miss me the way I missed him. He had a life at college, and no amount of communication on twitter and texting would compare to the next flesh and blood girl he took to his bed.

 

It didn’t matter to me that he’d never said a word about being physical with anyone but his ex-girlfriend or that this was the first time he’d ever admitted something like that to me. There was no way for him to know I’d overheard him during his Christmas break or that I still pleasured myself to the memory of his voice as his orgasm spilled from him. I’d never felt more like a fool, and I didn’t know how to recover.

 

“I— Oh, god. I’ve got to go,” I choked through my horror. “I’m sorry, Peeta.”

 

“Katniss! Katniss, wait!” he called, but I slammed the laptop closed and struggled to keep from losing it completely.

 

My phone rang almost immediately. First he called, and when I didn’t answer, he left two messages before sending a number of texts, all confused and all obviously from a deep hurt that I’d abandoned him when he was in pain.

 

I didn’t answer him for two weeks, not until I got a message from him telling me he’d completed his semester and was coming home. He made it clear that talking to me was his first priority. I know now that the only reason he didn’t get in his car and drive to see me was his fear that he’d lose his scholarship if he didn’t stay there and study for finals. He confessed later that he should have done it anyway since the mental anguish he’d suffered nearly made him fail anyway.

 

I’ll admit I was hiding in my room when he finally arrived back home for the summer. I expected him to pound on the front door, but instead I got another text message from him.

 

**Open your window.**

 

I stared at the screen for several moments before doing what he asked. His had been closed tightly for most of the semester, and the solid pane mocked me every day with his absence. Now it was open, and not only was it open, but Peeta’s frame filled it, his blonde curls falling over his forehead and his piercing blue eyes open and shining with his infectious charm.

 

Peeta waved happily and shouted, “Katniss! I’m home!”

 

I couldn’t help smiling back. His excitement was contagious, and he looked so very good with his t-shirt stretching across his broad shoulders and hugging his torso down to his slim hips. When did he get so handsome? Was it after he left for school or had it happened earlier when I wasn’t paying attention?

 

I waved back carefully in an attempt to contain my excitement that he was next door again, but he picked up his phone and sent me another text. I shook my head at him and glanced at his message.

 

**Come over, please. I have the house to myself. We need to talk.**

It only took one look at him with a broad, cheesy, hopeful smile on his face, and I couldn’t say no. I signaled that I’d be there soon and closed the window.

 

I didn’t even get a chance to knock. Peeta threw open the door as soon as I stepped on the stoop and swept me into a bone-crushing hug. “I missed you,” fell from his lips as he pulled me in the house and tugged me upstairs to his room by my hand.

 

“Peeta!” I protested futilely. He was on a roll and nothing I could say was going to stop him. In seconds, we were in his room with the door closed and the window still wide open. He plopped down on the bed and dragged me down beside him.

 

“Alright, I can’t have my best friend mad at me anymore—especially when I’m still not exactly sure what it was that I did to upset you.” His face was serious. His lips twitched slightly when I started to speak, but he interrupted me again. “I have some ideas, but I’m going to need some help deciphering the signs.”

 

“Peeta, I—”

 

“I don’t know if I’ve ever told you why I sleep with the windows open,” he interjected without letting me finish my sentence. “Have I, Katniss?”

 

I shook my head and glanced down at my hands. I slipped them under my legs to conceal my trembling fingers while he spoke.

 

“I didn’t sleep with the windows opened until I moved here, and we became neighbors. There wasn’t any reason to at my old place, but the first day we got this house, I heard you in your backyard. You were huddled in the corner nearest my house, and I heard you singing. I already knew you from school, but when I heard you sing that day… Katniss, my heart stood still in my chest.”

 

My own heart clutched, and I raised my eyes to glance at him. His gaze pierced through me, and I saw the sincerity etched in his face.

 

“I had a crush on you from the first day of school, but when I heard you sing I knew I was a goner. You became an unattainable dream—so special and inspiring—until I saw you sitting in that cafeteria alone. I’d kept my distance before because I thought you had something with Gale. When he left, I got the confidence to approach you.” He gulped and continued, “The last three years have been amazing, Katniss. So amazing that I dreaded leaving for school. I was afraid you’d pull away, and when you seemed okay with me leaving… Well, I thought you’d never see me as anything more than a friend, so when Glimmer asked me out, I said yes.”

 

I nodded but said nothing. I still couldn’t erase the hurt I’d felt when I imagined them together or remembered when they were.

 

“I didn’t expect to like her, Katniss, but she was so vivacious; so willing to try new things and, most importantly, into me in a way I didn’t think you’d ever be. And everything was fine between us until she picked the fight with me about the open window.”

 

“She didn’t like the open window?” I asked in disbelief. What an absolutely stupid reason to end a relationship with someone as wonderful as Peeta.

 

“It wasn’t the window. It was the reason I always had it open.”

 

“What’s the reason?” I asked quietly. I had no idea what he was going to say, but my heart melted when he spoke.

 

“When I first heard you singing in the backyard, I fell in love with you, so I left my window open—even in the dead of winter—just in case you did it again. And you did. You used to sneak out there all the time—usually in the evenings, sometimes at night—and you’d sing the most beautiful, haunting melodies. I was hooked. I didn’t want to miss even a second, and so I left my window open to hear you.”

 

I studied his expression, but I couldn’t see any signs of deceit. “But what about when you aren’t here? Why at college?”

 

“I got used to it. I slept with it open and waiting for you for so long that I became conditioned. I couldn’t sleep with it closed. I’d wake up with nightmares, almost always about losing you, if I left it shut.” His voice trailed into a whisper, and he finally fell silent.

 

“Wh-what now?” I stammered. He’d just confessed what I’d been waiting to hear for months, but I wasn’t sure what that actually meant for us. Had I missed my chance? Was he interested, or was he still trying to get over his ex?

 

He reached for my arm and pulled my hand free before clasping it between his. I lifted my other hand to his cheek, and he caught it and pressed it to his lips. I remember when my father used to do the same thing with my mother, and I wonder where Peeta picked it up. Surely not from his own parents. I’d never seen any affection between them in the decade they’d been our neighbors.

 

“That depends on you,” he murmured against my palm. “I couldn’t figure out why you were so angry with me that day, why you left so abruptly and slammed the laptop closed. But I remembered something Glimmer had said after she met you at Christmas.”

 

“What did she say?” I choked out through my dry, closed throat.

 

“She said she didn’t stand a chance against you. That she could never compete with the girl next door because my window would always be open for you.”

 

“Oh, Peeta,” I whispered through a sob. “I heard you. I heard you and her through the window on your Christmas break, and I was devastated. I missed you so much when you were away, and then to hear you calling her name, hearing you moaning and panting with her… Oh, god, Peeta. Hearing you that way was so erotic. I wanted it to be with me.”

 

A look of understanding colored his features, and he leaned toward me. Our lips quivered and trembled as his mouth found mine, and a wave of relief washed over me.

 

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he murmured as his lips captured mine and broke free repeatedly. “I’ve always wanted it to be you.”

 

“Don’t ever close your window, Peeta,” I pled as my mouth found his again.

 

_And he never did. It was always open for me after that._

_Always._


End file.
